The Years Between
by Mari Luyken
Summary: P/T: Sometimes, life offers second chances - Sequel to "Pieces of my Dreams".


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The years between

[Third story in the Christmas Trilogy: "Decisions"]

Marié Luyken

PG-13

Disclaimer: I can claim no right to the characters owned by Paramount, but this little story (and trilogy) is proudly mine.

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NOTE: This story is the third in the Christmas Trilogy with I suppose, the overall title: "Decisions". The reader's responses to the first story "Noëlle" inspired me to write the second story, "Pieces of my Dreams". It took me a while (although I decided in principle that there'd be a third piece) to get to working on the final story. Now it's here and I hope readers who enjoyed the first two, will find enjoyment and satisfaction in reading the last story.  
  
**Warning**: If it's mushy, it's because its predecessors were!  
  
**SUMMARY**: Sometimes, life offers people second chances.

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The years between

The Academy at this time of the year always did look deserted, thought B'Elanna as she made her way to her office on the second level. Most of the cadets had gone to spend the short vacation with family. Here and there were still those - mostly seniors - who stayed to complete important papers; cadets who were so focused on their studies and research they had little time for play. 

She entered her office and stood at her window. Her view of the gardens was unhindered, and this morning she could see the branches of the trees at the end of a copse still shaking off flecks of snow that had settled on them during the night. A light wind had sprung up and she could see the fluff sifting down until they settled noiselessly on the ground. B'Elanna smiled. Nothing here was left to grow to chance. The word to describe the impressive lawns and gardens of Starfleet Headquarters and the Academy was 'manicured'. Yes, that was an apt description. Yet, it was done in such a way as to give the appearance of natural beauty, of wildness and wilderness, something she supposed many still hankered for where everything was reduced to mere facades. 

She turned to look around her in the office and wondered if the other offices also had the appearance of entering into the Christmas spirit. She knew Admiral Paris kept a tiny tree in the corner of his office and Professor McClaren of Astrophysics had a star that seemed to float around in his office. He called it a 'remembrance of the Star of Bethlehem'. She marvelled at the quirks of some of the staff here, especially the humans for whom this season came to mean so much. 

She gave a little smile. The only sign in her office that Christmas was only three days away was the box on her desk, wrapped with colourful shiny red paper and tied with a gold ribbon that ended on top in a neat little rose. Before she left for her apartment, she would drop by at Tom's house and give it to Noëlle. Noëlle had received a gift from her every year for the last twelve years, and it was something B'Elanna knew the young lady looked forward to. 

B'Elanna gave a small wistful sigh.

Tom would not be there, she knew. Lately he had seemed to avoid her, and she wondered at it. It was so unlike him and the only reason she wanted to append to his behaviour was that he still pined for his wife. After two years he must still be mourning. She had tried once to speak to him about it and he clammed up in his customary fashion of not letting her see what it was that bothered him or how it distressed him still. He had been evasive, and she knew that even as his friend, it was difficult to get him to talk to her. 

It was very tough on him now. The last two years could not have been easy for Tom and Noëlle. Kathryn Janeway-Paris had died suddenly just before Christmas two years ago of an aneurysm that had formed on her brain. She had collapsed in her office and was found too late for the best medical personnel to save her. Tom had been distraught and Noëlle… Noëlle had taken it very hard, and B'Elanna remembered how lost she looked even though she had clasped her father's hand very tightly. They drew comfort from one another in their time of grief and mourning. In the first months after Kathryn Janeway's death Noëlle had often communicated with B'Elanna. She had still been based on Vulcan then, completing her own studies and research that had given her the coveted position at the Academy as Head of Quantum Mechanics, and specialising in transwarp technology. 

B'Elanna had not been a little surprised at the way Noëlle sought her company, not wanting to put the young girl in a spot by asking why she didn't speak with her two grandmothers, or her Aunt Phoebe, or her grandfather, Admiral Paris. Noëlle had offered that information herself one day when she had called B'Elanna. It had been in the dead of night for her and her drug-like sleep after pulling too many all nighters had been rudely invaded by the insistent buzz of her vid-com.

Noëlle had been tearful. 

"I don't have too many friends, Aunt B'Elanna," she stated. "And I can't really talk to Grandma Gretchen or Grandma Paris. They're old..." She emphasized the _old._

B'Elanna had smiled then. To a fourteen year old her grandmothers were indeed ancient and it must have been difficult to talk to them about her troubles. Noëlle was a teenager who lost her mother and needed to be understood at a time of her life when she needed that vital link of a mother-daughter friendship. 

"I don't think they'd like to be told they're old, Noëlle…"

It was Tom's eyes that seemed to stare back at her. 

"But, you understand, don't you?"

"Sure, honey, I understand."

"I miss my Mom..."

B'Elanna felt her heart burn at the young girl's unhappiness.

"I know, Noëlle. It's only a few months, and it's still very painful - "

"Does it go away, ever, Aunt B'Elanna?"

She had given a sigh. How to answer a young girl who was looking expectantly at her, waiting for an answer? 

"It does subside after a while, Noëlle, to be replaced by gentle memories that you will always cherish, and as time goes by, whenever you think of her, it will not be with so much pain as you have right now, but with tenderness. She will always speak to you, you know. No matter where you are, or what the circumstances, you will remember the little things, things she said that will be your solace."

"You ...understand...?"

She could have told Noëlle then that that was how Tom remained alive in her own heart, that the pain had dimmed. She had memories she still cherised, everyone of them beautiful, golden, held close to her heart. Yes, B'Elanna thought, she understood.

"Yes..."

"Daddy, he - "

"He needs you, Noëlle. He misses your mom too, and I know he'd appreciate it if you talked to him..."

"Aunt B'Elanna, it's just that - "

"He's in too much pain right now?"

"I think it's something else, Aunt B'Elanna, I - "

Noëlle had paused then, wiped the tears from her face with the back of her hand like a little girl, then she smiled at B'Elanna. B'Elanna returned her smile.

"It was good talking to you, Aunt B'Elanna..."

"Anytime you like, Noëlle, you can contact me, okay?"

"Sure thing."

When they had closed communication, B'Elanna was still looking at the screen and thinking how like Tom Noëlle sounded then. Father and daughter were still finding it difficult coping with the loss of Kathryn Janeway and B'Elanna had wondered what it was that Noëlle had hinted at that she suddenly stopped in mid-air, so to speak. She hadn't pressed Noëlle, allowing the young girl to open up naturally to her and knowing that Noëlle wouldn't offer any information if pressed to do so. 

It had been the strangest state of affairs in the Paris household when B'Elanna had first met Noëlle when the child was five and the ebullient little girl had taken to her spontaneously. Noëlle was, like her father, intrigued by all things Klingon and when she was about seven years old, insisted that her parents get her a bat-leth. 

This time of the year, B'Elanna supposed, was not a happy time for them, a time when people were more disposed to reflect on happy memories. Kathryn's absence from their lives was felt very keenly. B'Elanna had been at the memorial service and Tom had looked stiff, uncommonly austere, the twitching muscle in his jaw the only movement in his otherwise taut face. Her own words of commiseration was accepted with a nod, and Tom had hardly looked her in the eyes when he did so. She had gained the impression then - strange that it struck her only now - that he had not wanted to look at her, trying to evade her own gaze. Months later when Noëlle called her, that feeling had been there again that something was missing. Like a few missing pieces in a puzzle it teased her. 

She didn't speak to Tom again and had joined the quiet Chakotay who had been standing with her, Tuvok and T'Pel. .

B'Elanna looked at the package on her desk. She picked up Noëlle's gift and held it as if it were the most precious possession. _I am happy…Like I promised you so long ago, Tom, I am happy. I try never to think of the might-have-beens. My decision I made I have no regrets over…_

Her lips tugged into a gentle smile as she put the box down again.

The first year at the Vulcan Science Academy had been the worst. She silently blessed Tuvok and T'Pel for the constant support they offered her, for absorbing so much of her pain and anguish. It had been the most difficult decision of her life she made twelve years ago, one which she knew would give some people happiness and others…others had to work to the point of exhaustion to forget. 

She couldn't forget. She could never forget Tom Paris. How could she? She never stopped loving him.

"I never stopped…" she whispered softly as she stood at her window again. "I just had to put him where memories of him could no longer hurt me and wait patiently for the time to come when I could think of him without pain." 

Tom… 

She did get to meet Noëlle only a year after she and Tom divorced. That was when she had been on a break from the Science Academy and visited Harry and Seven, Chakotay, and Neelix. Her little detour to Tom's new home to meet Kathryn and Noëlle had filled her with apprehension, and at the last she had been wracked by serious doubt. Why was she punishing herself if visiting Tom with his new family was indeed punishment? She had been fraught with thoughts that she was setting herself up for more hurt, she was listening to an evil little voice that told her not to go. She knew one thing for certain. Only if she faced them, she would know that she was over her own hopeless obsession for Tom and that seeing Kathryn Janeway happy would not hurt her. She knew it was above all, Noëlle's happiness that would ultimately make her decision worthwhile, honorable, courageous. 

It had been a strange visit. She had seen Noëlle for the first time, and the child had taken immediately to her, showing off her toy targ B'Elanna had sent her the previous year. B'Elanna had seen Tom and Kathryn together. While she herself had been calm and fearless, Tom and Kathryn had been slightly uncomfortable until she broke the ice by saying:

"You have made a wonderful home, here, Kathryn. Noëlle is beautiful and I can see she's ecstatic about her Daddy."

The tone of her voice must have reassured them and it was almost as if she could hear them breathe a sigh of relief. Tom had taken her hand and held it warmly in his, his eyes filling with something so undefinable that even now, years later, she couldn't say what it was that clouded his eyes still. But, they did seem happier when they invited her to make her visits more regular if she could get away from Vulcan. For a short while she and Kathryn had talked about her work and she had been effusive in the reports she could give both of them. Her work was rewarding. 

"And, I think I'm beginning to act more Vulcan..." she had said reflectively.

"Heaven forbid that you should say: 'Vulcans do not feel'..."

"No," she laughed, "but I find myself sometimes slipping into their way of speaking." Then she had launched into 'I concur' and 'Indeed'. 

Yes, after that her visits became not really more frequent, but easier. She gloried in the fact that she could love Tom still so desperately, yet look at him in a dispassionate way that would have made Tuvok proud. She wasn't playing a game either. She wasn't deluding herself and knew that she was busy piecing together her shattered dreams and that she was beginning to live again. She was happy, really happy to see Tom so happy. Especially in the first two years. After that, they settled into the normal family life with the normal sense of togetherness and familiarity she knew many couples drifted into. 

Was that the reason that she missed some important signals? Did she justify the quietness in Tom, the sometimes too long and penetrative looks he gave her as just part of the family way of behaving? She imagined that some married people looked with envy at those who could still move around - like she could - without having to consider some major decision making. Did she use all these 'excuses' to defend something that was too magnificent, too impossible, too unlikely ever to contemplate?

When she faced Tuvok on her return to Vulcan, she had just stood mutely in front of him. He had given her a long and searching look.

"It will hurt less, B'Elanna. Your healing will soon be complete."

"I still love him, Tuvok. I can never deny that within myself," she said with quiet dignity. There was conviction in her voice and Tuvok's nod was to show he approved.

"You are right, B'Elanna. You will always love Tom Paris, but you will cherish that in your heart. The memories are good ones."

"I know," she said, giving him a little smile. 

"Captain Paris and Admiral Janeway, they are well?"

"They are happy, Tuvok."

"There are clouds in your eyes now, B'Elanna Torres."

"You said it would take time, Tuvok."

"Yes, I said that. I only mention it to you as a statement of fact."

"I understand."

"The little girl?"

B'Elanna had paused for a few seconds. The clouds went and in its place came a warmth, a tender welling at the thought of Noëlle Paris.

"Noëlle is a very happy little girl, Tuvok. She basks in her parents' love and attention. She - she adores Tom…"

"And?"

Her bearing was proud. It was in the way her shoulders stiffened and the way her eyes met his, unafraid. 

"I did the right thing, Tuvok. I need to establish that thought in my mind permanently. I did the right thing."

"For them, B'Elanna Torres."

"Yes…"

So deep she was in her reverie that she hardly heard the chime until it sounded again. When the caller stepped inside, B'Elanna's face registered surprise. The young cadet stood just inside her door. There was a look of apprehension in her eyes, yet something of her mother's fearless way in which she tackled something she knew was going to be difficult. 

"Noëlle?"

"Captain Torres, may I speak with you, please?"

*

**__**

Several hours earlier.

He was drunk. It had become a habit lately, one that he knew had become more and more difficult to control. Not that he felt the need to curb his intake whenever he was home. But on his ship…on duty, it was something he forced to keep under rigid control, exercising discipline of long years in Starfleet and lately, on one of its largest and most advanced vessels. 

The music blaring from Noëlle's room made the pounding in his head unbearable and before long he knew he was going to get in there and turn the music off himself. 

Then he would have to face a long dissertation on the rights of the individual and the freedom of expression. Then he would have to face the gloomy stare and inevitable preaching he knew he was going to get because he was home and not fit to be of any use around it except lying in a stupor. It wasn't that bad, but Noëlle acted as if it were. 

He had no inclination to get into any argument with Noëlle. She sounded then too much like Kathryn, and Kathryn... 

Tom groaned as a wave of pain hit him at the base of his skull. He tried to change his position on the couch, but the movement itself caused him to wince. He was suffering from the classic hangover. He knew he could get something from the med-kit in the bathroom. The medication would eradicate the headache as if he never had been drinking steadily in the first place. But then...

That would make him see straight again. Sober. And seeing straight was what brought on another round of old memories; seeing straight plunged him into his old, old guilt. He thought he had been on that road and back, but here he was, and on the road to hell again. He didn't want to think. He wanted to remain in this haze of pain and forgetfulness and lack of control that kept him in limbo for at least a few more hours before she would arrive. 

By the time B'Elanna came, he would be able to look her in the eye again and he could act as if he hadn't had a thought in his head about her for twelve years straight after she had given him his freedom. 

What freedom was that?

Another round of guilt he couldn't shake off? Twelve years of remembering the unbearable sacrifice she made to secure for him his place in the sun? What was that freedom that made him think of her in too many unguarded moments? Worrying about her, caring whether she would be spending a Christmas alone, wondering whether she was happy, concerned when something happened to her like when she had been so ill four years ago? What was that freedom that he constantly remembered the day Klingons celebrated their Day of Honor? 

Yes, B'Elanna had given him his freedom and with it, enslaved him for twelve more years of guilt. He had been torn. Torn between his love for her and his passion for Kathryn. He had been torn to pieces when he read her letter. How could he at once taste freedom and at the same time felt like the world's worst heel? How could he feel the exhilaration at the prospect of seeing Kathryn again and being with her and Noëlle forever, and at the same time feel a terrible, terrible shame that B'Elanna was letting him go because she loved him enough to want to see him happy?

His mother... Tom sighed. It wasn't that she didn't like Kathryn. It was just that B'Elanna was her beloved daughter, as she always said in the years he had been married to B'Elanna. And even after the divorce...B'Elanna always made a point of visiting her former mother-in-law. His mother had never made secret of the fact that she thought their divorce was the wrong thing to do, not because divorce was something she didn't believe in but simply because she saw... Myrna Paris saw so much more what he only later realized with so much pain and disillusionment. He was still in love with B'Elanna.

Now Kathryn was dead. He didn't want to think again of the last five years of their marriage. The first year or two…He had been drunk with just the idea that he was with her, but gradually, as it became apparent that he couldn't forget B'Elanna's sacrifice or forget what they shared, the bubble burst. The passion…the lust… Kathryn becoming at times… Did she sense it in him? Was that what it was all the time? They grew apart and in the last years they were just…friends…

Don't think. Don't think!

"Dammit, Noëlle," he cried in anguish as the music blared from her room. 

Noëlle came out from her room and sauntered into the lounge. She stood defiantly facing her father. 

"What is it, Dad?" 

Her mouth curved into something he couldn't exactly determine. It could be distaste, insolence or simply annoyance that he disturbed her. 

"And why are you still in your uniform?"

"Practising how to be a good cadet in my own home?" 

She stood with her hands on her hips…

"That's unkind, Noëlle," Tom said quietly, wincing again as a stab of pain hit him.

"Dad," Noëlle said on a long-suffering sigh, "you know you can take medication..."

"Thank you, Dr. Paris. Your advice is well meant. Not that I'll take it, naturally."

"Now who's nasty, Dad?"

Tom sighed and rose from the couch. He took Noëlle's hand in his. There was an unhappy droop to her mouth, and her eyes looked clouded. He sighed and pulled her to him, giving her a hug. He wondered when last he hugged Noëlle…

Noëlle's nose twitched delicately. Tom reeked of stale wine, but he was her father and right now he was going through something she could only guess at. It was maddening, she knew. It happened every time a certain Captain, now professor of Quantum Mechanics at the Academy came to visit. There were parts of this puzzle missing and B'Elanna Torres' connection to her father was just one of the pieces. Aunt B'Elanna usually came two or three days before Christmas to bring her her present. B'Elanna Torres was due today and her father knew it. He should have prepared for her visit. Noëlle was agitated and tried to rock him into some reaction. Her music helped, somewhat… She sighed at the thought of B'Elanna bringing her present. It was something she always looked forward to and it had become a tradition. 

Noëlle knew that Aunt B'Elanna and her father had been married but that they divorced so that he could marry her mother. 

"Daddy..."

"Sweetheart?"

"Go, take the medication. I'll wait for you. I'm looking for something, though. I wonder if you'd seen it. It may be in your room…"

"Noëlle, you were always looking for your own stuff among your mother's things..."

"I know, Dad. It's the life of a teenager. Scratch around for something at the last minute. I want to wear it when Aunt B'Elanna comes."

Tom held her away from him.

"You want to impress her, right?"

"Right. You know how much I like her, Dad."

Tom gave a sigh. 

"Yes. Now scoot before I take another drink."

"Don't you dare embarrass me," she said with mock outrage before she vanished into Tom's bedroom. He looked for a moment sad before he turned to the bathroom. Mercifully the music had stopped and it was quiet in the house. 

*

Noëlle stood in her father's bedroom and looked around. It had the clinical appearance of the man who lived without a wife. There were no adornments and not even a picture of her mother graced his bedside anymore. 

Years ago, when he married her mother and became part of their little family unit, they told her only the barest of details. Just enough for her to know that he divorced another woman and then married Kathryn Janeway and became her Daddy for always. She remembered how as a little girl she could never stop longing to have her father with her all the time, and when it became a reality, she asked no questions and accepted his new, exhilarating and constant presence in her life. She blossomed then, and only later, later did she notice the little cracks. 

They had what she could only term as an average to normal family life, with its even pace that hardly registered a ripple. What ripples there were, were minor arguments. Nothing that couldn't be talked through though, or straightened out. He loved her mother in his own way. She had no doubt of that.

It was how he loved her mother that even to this day she could never, never be certain whether that was the all-consuming love and grand passion she read about in books and heard about when others talked about it. She never witnessed the chemistry so many spoke of, or what she had heard was their grand passion. They kissed when it was required, a routine they had fallen into when he came home from work, from a mission or returned from somewhere. In the last years she never saw them kiss… 

She watched them constantly. She hungered, chased, searched for the great passion. Was it always so? Could grand passion and undying love and thunderous waters over boulders vanish in the rigors of a marriage and family life and constant battles and limitations on movement and just the plain nitty-gritty of everyday married life and planning? She had always wondered at it, and then wondered what her father's life had been like with Aunt B'Elanna. If what she read in books and seen in her father's database of the great love dramas of twentieth century films, she wasn't seeing that in the way her father and mother experienced their married life. She never surprised them… They never surprised her...

Her must have loved her mother. Of that she was certain, and Aunt B'Elanna? She gave a sigh. It had never escaped her the way her father was still so protective over B'Elanna Torres. She thought that Aunt B'Elanna must have loved her father once . She had always been told - on the occasions she asked - that her father had divorced B'Elanna Torres. Consequently, her childish mind could only interpret that as that he had stopped loving B'Elanna and then decided to marry her mother. As a child it was something she accepted without question; her primary concern was that he be always with them. When he came to live with them permanently, she had never considered that there could possibly have been other reasons for their break-up. For her it was the best thing that could have happened as Tom Paris became officially her father and she took his name. 

Perhaps he made a mistake, Noëlle thought as she rummaged through the old chest that stood at the foot of her father's bed. Here he kept his trinkets and other odd items. She had to find that Klingon bangle she wanted to impress Aunt B'Elanna with. She had been given it on her thirteenth birthday when Aunt B'Elanna told her Klingon teens took the Rite of Ascension. Now she wanted to wear it and tell B'Elanna Torres that she intended taking the Klingon Martial Arts Programme the Academy offered. 

When she heard her father call her name she gave a muffled response and then continued rummaging when he became quiet again. He was probably reading something. 

Her fingers clasped around something and when she fished it from the depths of the chest it was a leather pouch. Noëlle frowned when she looked at it. She had never seen this and she was certain that her mother had never seen it. 

She opened the pouch and removed the PADD. Her fingers delved again and the other much smaller item was a ring, a wedding band. 

Aunt B'Elanna's? It had to be. 

She frowned as she twisted the band between her thumb and forefinger. Yes, it was B'Elanna's ring, she realized as she read the inscription: 'For B'Elanna'. Noëlle slipped the ring on her finger and held out her hand. The ring gleamed. It looked brand new still. She sat down on the closed chest and held up the PADD. It was relatively easy to break the code and at that moment her curiosity weighed heavier than responsibility and the need to preserve and respect another's privacy. 

But she had been intrigued the moment she opened the pouch, and when she started with "Dear Tom," she didn't look back. Her heart hammered painfully against her rib cage as she realized the import of what she was reading. 

Long minutes after she had read the letter, her eyes swimming with tears, she whispered softly:

__

"I understand now, Daddy. I understand more than you can ever know..."

Minutes later her decision was made. She left her father's room quietly and went to her own bedroom. When she appeared in the lounge again, Tom Paris had sobered up. He looked at her with his clear blue eyes. His hair was thinning now more than ever, and pretty soon he'd be looking like Grampy, she noted absently. 

"Noëlle?"

"Dad, I'll be back in two hours. I'm going over to the Academy..."

"What, you're planning on bringing your Aunt B'Elanna home?"

She looked at him so strangely then. There was a shine in her eyes before she spoke and her words had an enigmatic ring to them.

"Yes, Daddy. I'm bringing her home."

She was out of the house before he had time to ask her what she meant. Then he walked into his bedroom. The first thing he noticed was the empty pouch and B'Elanna's ring lying on his bedside table. 

Tom picked up the ring, his hand trembling as he held it up.

"For B'Elanna..."

*

Noëlle pressed the chime twice before B'Elanna Torres responded with 'enter' and she stepped inside. 

She stood still for a few moments, on attention as she was still in her uniform. 

"Captain Torres, may I speak with you?"

"Noëlle, at ease..."

Noëlle relaxed only momentarily before she prepared to ask her question again. B'Elanna stood behind her desk, Noëlle on the other side. Noëlle looked at her so long that B'Elanna felt a momentary unease. Her hands wrung together almost nervously. 

"What is it, Noëlle?"

"He never loved my mother quite like he loves you, Aunt B'Elanna. I should know. I've lived with my parents for ten years..."

"Noëlle, what are you talking about?" B'Elanna asked as the warmth crept into her cheeks and she knew there was an embarrassing blush to her cheeks. 

"This," the young woman said succinctly as she held the PADD to B'Elanna. 

B'Elanna's hands stilled, her body turned rigid as she realized what Noëlle had just put down on her desk. 

"That - that is private and confidential, Noëlle. You - you were not supposed to read it..." B'Elanna stammered, unable to hide her distress and wondering why Tom had kept her letter.

"You divorced my father because you loved him so much you were prepared to let him go..." Noëlle said, her lower lip trembling as she tried to stem the tears.

"Noëlle, what I did, I had no regrets..."

"But my father had!" she replied heatedly. "You don't know, you don't know what it was like to see my parents together. Whatever there was, Aunt B'Elanna, was gone by the time I was ten years old and old enough to see that Tom Paris didn't love my mother the way you *thought* he did, as *everyone* thought."

"Noëlle, Noëlle," B'Elanna tried to placate, but the distraught girl charged on.

"No one should have expected you to do what you had done, Captain," Noëlle addressed her formerly. "No one! How could you let the man you loved beyond everything go out of your life?"

"I - " B'Elanna paused, trying to find the rights words, "your father was constantly pining for you, Noëlle."

"Right! That's it, Aunt B'Elanna. He missed me. _Me_, not so much my mother. Oh, I guarantee you that there must have been something of the chemistry left that made me, but after a while, it was gone. Gone! Do you hear me? There was nothing except my father's old regard for a legendary Starfleet Captain, _nothing_ except his abiding respect and friendship. In the end they were more companions than - than…"

"Noëlle, you are out of - "

"- out of line, you say?"

"Yes... It's over, Noëlle. I carved my own happiness. Yes, I've been happy."

"You _love_ him! How can you deny that? How can you deny yourself?"

"Noëlle, aren't you a bit disrespectful of your mother's memory?"

"Did you know," Noëlle continued, ignoring B'Elanna's censure as she stood with her hands braced on the edge of the desk, "that my mother and father didn't share the same bedroom the last five years of their marriage?"

B'Elanna blanched at Noëlle's directness. It wasn't her business. It wasn't her business, yet this young and distraught girl, daughter of Kathryn and Tom Paris, was telling her the intimate details of her parents' life. 

"It's not my business - "

"You're not in the least curious to know?"

"As I said - "

"Oh, they were smart, Aunt B'Elanna, in this century to claim that the with rigors of their work and the godawful odd hours Daddy worked, it was better that he slept in his own room."

"Young lady..."

"There was nothing left but ashes, Aunt B'Elanna. Nothing but ashes," she repeated then sat down finally in the chair and covered her face with her hands. For a few seconds Noëlle Paris sobbed brokenly. When she looked at the older woman again, her eyes were red. 

"Your grand sacrifice…it was in vain…my-my father couldn't forget you, Aunt B'Elanna. He tried. He tried. But he couldn't forget you. I th-think my m-mother knew," she stammered over the last words. 

B'Elanna felt the old, long buried feelings wanting to surface. But Noëlle… 

"I'm sorry, Noëlle. I made what I knew was the right decision." She saw the way Noëlle looked at the gift that was lying on the desk. There was a spark of interest, B'Elanna noted idly. It was the knowledge that B'Elanna was due at the Paris home in a few hours.

"It was what you thought was the right decision," Noëlle countered her, adding, "for them, for me, but _not_ for you..."

"Noëlle, it can't be changed. Your father - " B'Elanna faltered, tried to stem the rush of emotion as the spectre of her dreams visited her with full force. There were so many things, so many things... but what Noëlle was saying… Why, it looked to her as if the young cadet wanted her father to hook up with his ex-wife again. She looked ready to give her blessing… Noëlle's next words interrupted the rushing train of her thoughts. 

"Did you know that he drinks to forget? He was drunk before I left the house, Aunt B'Elanna. I made sure he sobered up before you came..." Noëlle's eyes gleamed.

B'Elanna thought that Tom had so often on Voyager done the same thing whenever he found anything difficult to cope with or to come to terms with. Whatever the reason was now, it really wasn't her business... Still, there was a creeping curiosity that mastered her senses and she looked questioningly at the young girl, so brilliant in her first months at the Academy and already a leader in the making.

"The answer is in your letter to him, isn't it? But you can't know because I lived with it and my mother lived with it. She was happy, Aunt B'Elanna, but happy for my sake. Daddy, he - he could never deal with the fact that you gave him up, still loving him and him still loving you - "

She looked at B'Elanna's surprised expression.

"I don't want to sound disloyal to my mother, Aunt B'Elanna, but my father never loved her the same way that I think he loved you."

Noëlle smiled with the wisdom far beyond her years. And B'Elanna wanted to eject Noëlle from her office for opening up old wounds and letting her bleed again, and letting her hope again. Her heart had started pounding madly at hearing the way Noëlle spoke.

"Dad would be restless for days after you had visited, did you know that?"

"No, I didn't, Noëlle."

"He is still in love with you."

"You are disloyal to your mother."

"I want to see my father happy, just as you wanted to see him happy twelve years ago and gave him to me. I want to see him smile again and I want to see the great passion come alive in him that I _know_ is lurking in him."

"You are a romantic..." B'Elanna said, smiling for the first time as she felt the weight lifting off her shoulders.

"I guess I was looking for it in them and I didn't see it..."

"What did you expect to see?"

"Them making love and forgetting I'm still in the room?"

"Noëlle!"

"You see what I mean? They were never demonstrative. Not in the later years, at least. No spontaneity, I suppose, the way I used to see Uncle Harry and Seven kiss and hold hands in public."

"They do?"

"Oh, yes!" Noëlle smiled and then the smile froze again as the thought of it brought her back to her parents. "Mom and Dad..." Noëlle sighed. "They performed, I think," she said reflectively, and her eyes had a faraway look in them. "For me, for Grandma Gretchen and Grandma Paris and Grampy..."

"That's not fair, Noëlle."

"It was good show, but I came home with them in the evenings, I stayed home with them when - when - " Noëlle's eyes welled with tears again and B'Elanna, on a sudden realization said:

"They dropped their masks..."

"Yes..." Noëlle Paris whispered softly and then her tears fell. 

B'Elanna walked round to Noëlle, pulled her gently from her chair and held her in her arms. The girl's body felt so warm, so soft and for the first time in many, many years, B'Elanna Torres allowed herself to dream again. 

Her hands came up to caress Noëlle's golden tresses. B'Elanna gave a sigh. Right then Noëlle felt like her own child, the child she dreamed could have been hers and Tom's. 

That was how Tom Paris, when he entered B'Elanna's office, found the two of them. 

"Now, if you two have finished, I'd like to see B'Elanna, if you don't mind, Noëlle…"

"Tom!"

"Daddy!"

B'Elanna and Noëlle cried out at the same time and in the next instant Noëlle was hugging her father with a stunned B'Elanna looking on. 

"I told you I'm bringing her home for us, Dad. And Daddy, did you know that - "

Tom had been looking at B'Elanna all the time his daughter spoke. His eyes never wavered from her and when he held Noëlle away from him, he said:

"Noëlle, if you please, I'll do my own courting. Now, scram!"

"Yes, Daddy!"

Noëlle gave B'Elanna an ecstatic look, sucked her breath in wonderment and in the next instant she was out the door. They hardly paid any attention to the whoop of delight that sounded in the corridor.

*

"Grampy," Noëlle said as she barged into her grandfather's office, "is Grandma at home?"

"Yes, why?" he asked as he let the obviously excited Noëlle who was still in her uniform although she was supposed to be at home, use his vid-com. She virtually pulled him from his chair and he stood beside her, non-plussed. Seconds later her grandmother's face appeared on the screen.

Gray-haired Grandma Paris held up her hands and Noëlle saw they were covered with flour…

"Noëlle, if you have any news, let it be good," she said sternly, but her eyes were warm as they rested on her granddaughter.

"Gramma, it's happened!"

"What?"

"Dad! He's right now in Aunt B'Elanna's office, proposing to her…"

"What?" That exclamation came from Owen, who stood next to her. The surprise was in his eyes and in the tone of his voice.

"Yes! It's true, Grandma."

Owen Paris gave a huge sigh of relief. He looked as his wife's eyes closed. A tear escaped and rolled down her cheek. She whispered only two words before she closed communication:

"Thank God…"

Owen Paris turned to his granddaughter. He smiled indulgently at her. 

"Your grandmother has always known, Noëlle. She always did love B'Elanna so much…"

Noëlle hugged her Grampy fiercely round his ample waist and exclaimed happily:

"I understand, Grampy."

**

Tom Paris looked at B'Elanna Torres. She shifted nervously, then turned her gaze away from him. He felt a thickness in his throat, and when he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

"Look at me…" 

She couldn't. It was so hard, so hard to look at him and hope anew. She knew that this time she'd never be able to pick up the pieces again, if that look in his eyes didn't mean what she dreamed of for so long.

"Please…"

"I - " 

B'Elanna paused for a second, and then she looked Tom in the eyes. Her hands clasped tightly together and Tom noticed how white her knuckles appeared. She spoke, her voice soft, thready.

"The years between, Tom, I worked very, very hard to accept the truth and - and let you - "

"Have my place in the sun?"

"Yes…"

"It's awfully cloudy out there now, B'Elanna."

"I don't know, Tom."

"The years between, B'Elanna," Tom repeated her words, "were the most difficult for me to endure. I could never forget..."

"Once, I picked up the pieces of my dreams and I promised you I'd be whole again…"

"Are you?"

"Dare I dream again?"

"Let me walk with you, B'Elanna, please."

His hand released her and Tom's fingers trembled as he touched her lips. Her eyes closed at the touch, a scalding tear ran down her cheek and trailed hotly over his finger. 

"Yes," came the softest whisper from her. A quiet sob escaped her as Tom took her gently into his arms. Like that they stood for long moments. She nestled her face in his neck, took in his smell, and all the old and familiar associations flared wildly in her as memories came rushing back.

"I love you, B'Elanna. I always have…"

She looked into his eyes, her own brimming with tears. When he spoke again, there was conviction in his voice, a quiet oath.

"I'll not let you be lonely again."

***

****

END


End file.
